Lesson Plans, Finals, and Graduation Week

In just a few days I will be in possession of an undergraduate degree! I am so excited, but sad to leave my school behind. We already had Convocation, and now have finals this week and graduation next weekend. But to get to graduation I have to first take finals! I am having trouble finding motivation to get work done. I already have a job and am doing well in all my classes, so even failing the finals I would still have passing grades.

One of my final projects this semester is to adapt a lesson plan to accommodate ELL students. We had to choose a pre-written lesson plan and add to it what different levels of ELL students would need. Having worked in Texas public schools, I was familiar with CSCOPE, but also with many teacher's distain for it. My professor suggested checking out a website called Read Write Think. I spent hours on it looking at lesson plans! Great lessons, all are TEKS/Common Core aligned.

I wanted to chose a lesson that I could use next year, so I looked for second grade lessons. There were so many! The one I ended up picking taught some economic vocabulary using Fancy Nancy and the Fabulous Fashion Boutique  

An adorable book and a cute lesson to lean some difficult words. I modified the lesson some to accommodate for ELLs and to add a spiral station work, but other than that it was a wonderful lesson as is. I know I will continue to reference this in the future!

Editing Woes and Advice

Sometimes the internet is a wealth of information, helping even the most ignorant person accomplish amazing things. But sometimes, the evil side of the internet rears its ugly head and you feel like the dumbest person in the world. Making a blog button in five easy steps sounds great in theory, but the reality of these complex steps leaves me disappointing and frustrated. Which is maybe why the accomplishments feel that much better.

I have been trying for about a week now to crack into they mystical world of clip art and coding, and am still utterly lost. I was able to change my blogger background and make links in posts, but nothing beyond that. I was trying to add some flair, but I am too stubborn and broke to pay for a blog design. Adobe is out of the question right now, so I was messing around with Powerpoint, but you can't make PNG images on there, so my pictures all had white backgrounds. While searching Pinterest, I clicked a link for an art project on Everyday Mom Ideas and found gold.  She had used a program called paint.net, which is a free editing program similar to a basic old version of Adobe.

I immediately downloaded the program and used it to edit my sweet Blog Header (thanks LeeLou!) It is a very basic program compared to something like Adobe, but I love that you can do layers and make PNG images. I am so excited to continue to work with this program and develop my blog! 

Do you have any more advice? I could use some suggestions, especially about clip art.